Knicks Owner Trying To Stop Jackson’s Staff Firings

Frank Isola of the New York Daily Newsreports that Phil Jackson, hired one month ago as president of basketball operations, is already clashing with owner James Dolan, as Dolan doesn’t want Jackson to fire certain personnel.

Just one month into his role as Knicks president, Jackson has already clashed with Dolan, the chairman of Madison Square Garden, over personnel decisions, the Daily News has learned. According to a team source, Jackson is looking to remove several staff members, which is commonplace when a new administration takes over, but Dolan opposes removing certain employees.

According to the source, Dolan’s reaction to Jackson’s request was to tell the 11-time NBA championship coach to simply focus his attention on building a winning team. To say that “minor friction,” as one Garden source called it, can be classified as Jackson’s honeymoon with Dolan being over may be stretching it a bit.

But at the very least it proves that Dolan — surprise, surprise wasn’t being entirely truthful last month when he claimed he was “willingly and gratefully” giving up control of the basketball decisions to Jackson, the Hall of Fame coach.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have recalled defenseman Slater Koekkoek from the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League today, vice president and general manager Steve Yzerman announced. Koekkoek, 21, has skated in 66 ga